


Everything She Always Wanted

by houdini74



Series: Clint and Marcy [1]
Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Boys In Love, Committed Relationship, Domestic Fluff, M/M, Meeting the Parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 09:42:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18914413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/houdini74/pseuds/houdini74
Summary: After their engagement, Patrick takes David to visit his parents for the first time.





	Everything She Always Wanted

She straightens the tablecloth for the tenth time.

“Marcy.” Clint is sitting in the recliner in the living room. “It’s going to be fine.”

“I know. I just want him to feel at home.”

This is the first time that Patrick has come home for a visit in almost two years and the first time that the man who has captured his heart will come with him. It’s been three months since Patrick’s birthday, three months since he’d told them about his relationship with David. Since then, she can hear the happiness in his voice when they speak in a way that she never has before. When Patrick had called last month to say that he and David were getting married, the joy radiating through the phone had almost taken her breath away. 

She’d been excited ever since Patrick had said they were coming for a visit, it has been too long and she wants to get to know David better. And she very badly wants David to feel at home here, to feel like this is a place where both he and her son are welcome. 

She reaches again for the corner of the tablecloth. 

“Marcy, I think they’re here.”

She opens the front door in time to see Patrick caress the back of David’s neck before pulling him in for a quick kiss. She sees David give a short, sharp nod. He’s nervous, she can see it in the set of his shoulders. Nervous probably, about meeting them again, about visiting Patrick’s childhood home. 

She watches them get out of the car, Patrick grabbing an excessively large suitcase and handing a smaller travel bag to David. 

“Patrick!” She comes down the front steps and pulls her son into a hug. Behind him, she can see David’s black and white clothed silhouette. He’s smiling unevenly, his hands clasped together, the sunlight glinting off of the gold rings on his left hand. As Patrick releases her and moves to hug Clint, she holds her arms out to David.

“David. I’m so glad you’re here.” David’s hug feels tentative at first, but she holds him tightly for a moment and eventually feels him respond. When she lets him go, Clint holds out his hand, seeming to sense that David might be overwhelmed by anything more intimate.

“Thank you for having me.”

“Us. Thanks for having us. Unless you’re going to make me sleep in the car?” She can see David start to relax as Patrick teases him.

“Don’t tempt me.” David retorts quickly, before looking embarrassed at his inappropriate response until Clint laughs. 

“Some things never change. He’s always been cheeky, even as a little boy.”

“Is that right?” David looks intrigued. “I’d love to hear more stories about this cheeky little boy.” 

“Well, maybe tomorrow we can get out the photo albums and I can tell you all the stories you want.”

“Oh my god.” Patrick is squirming beside her as David grins. She’s enjoying herself. With Rachel and Patrick growing up together, she’s never had the opportunity to share these types of stories or to embarrass her son in quite this way. 

Inside, she walks with them to Patrick’s old bedroom. They had converted it to an office and guest room some years ago, but it still contains an assortment of Patrick’s childhood things. Patrick sets the suitcase on the bed as David wanders over to the shelf in the corner that holds some of Patrick’s old trophies and school photos. 

She watches him touch his finger to the top of one of Patrick’s baseball trophies before he reaches behind to pull out an old photo. Patrick had been about sixteen, she remembers, performing in the high school talent show for the first time. He’d been so nervous, his voice cracking a couple of times on the high notes in Neil Young’s Harvest Moon. But David is noticing something different.

“Look at your hair.” The teasing is back in David’s voice, but there’s something else as well, a softness that makes her smile. In the photo, Patrick’s hair is longer than he wears it now, he’d cut it short after college, saying that the longer curls made him look too young.

Patrick laughs and nudges David playfully. “I think my hair is longer than yours.”

“I like the curls.” She can see a brief spark of desire in David’s eyes as he looks at her son, before he remembers she’s there and blinks it away. 

David sets the photo back on the shelf and pulls out an old certificate. “You were the Top Mathlete in the Mathlympics?”

“That’s right.” She can tell Patrick is trying not to laugh. “You should be grateful, it’s my mathletic ability that helps keep our business afloat.”

“No. No. No. You sound like Ted. We are definitely not doing mathletics.” She can tell that David’s horrified response is only partly sincere.

“I’m going to get you a sweater that says ‘My fiance is a mathlete’ on it.” 

“Don’t you dare.”

Watching how they are together, so easy and playful, fills her with a warmth that she isn’t expecting. She can tell that David is holding back a little, no doubt trying to be on his best behavior. From what she knows of both of them she suspects that there are moments when David tests Patrick’s patience and times when they challenge each other. But she knows Patrick needs that to keep from falling into a routine, from growing stagnant. She senses too that the give and take is a source of joy rather than a cause of discord between them.

Patrick unzips the front pocket of their suitcase and pulls out a tissue paper wrapped parcel that he hands to David. David’s awkwardness returns as he turns to her and holds out the gift.

“Thank you for being so welcoming, Mrs Brewer.”

“Oh, David.” She remembers and thinks maybe he does as well the gift that he’d given them on Patrick’s birthday, a peace offering to help smooth things between them. All at once, she’s surprised to feel her eyes well with tears. “You are always welcome here. And call me Marcy, no one calls me Mrs Brewer.”

She unwraps the present to find a set of skin care products from the store that David and her son have built together.

“Patrick told me what types of scents you like and I had our supplier mix up a special batch.”

“That’s so sweet, thank you David.” She uncaps one of the small jars and sniffs it. She can smell citrus and mint mixed with a touch of something deeper, eucalyptus, perhaps. It’s perfect. She gives him another quick hug and is pleased when he responds more easily this time.

“Your dad wants to barbeque tonight. I thought you could keep him company while David helps me in the kitchen.” She sees David and her son exchange a quick glance. 

“Um…I don’t cook much.”

“Don’t worry, David, I’ll go easy on you.” David laughs, but she can hear a note of sharpness in it. Her heart clenches a little at the idea that something so simple would make him anxious. In the short minutes they’ve been talking, she realizes that something has already shifted, that David is no longer just Patrick’s fiance, he’s family.

In the kitchen, she pours David a glass of red wine and gives it to him, smiling at the grateful look on his face. She hands him a bowl of potatoes, a paring knife and a roll of aluminum foil. Seeing his confusion, she adds a few quick instructions and sets about chopping vegetables for a salad.

“Now David, tell me about the wedding.” She’s glad to see some of his tension fall away as he begins to talk, gesturing as he prepares the baked potatoes.

“Something small, I think? Or at least as small as it can be, given that half the town wants to come. We haven’t figured out most of the details yet, I’m waiting for my sister to get back before we do most of the planning.”

She takes the foil-wrapped potatoes and puts them in the oven. She reaches over to squeeze his hands. “David. Thank you for making Patrick happy. He’s never been...I’ve never seen him this relaxed, not since he was a little boy.”

“I think...I think we do those things for each other.” The simple sweetness of it takes her breath away. David looks down and she worries that the moment might overwhelm them both. When David speaks again, it’s to jokingly change the subject. “Speaking of which, I seem to recall you promised me stories about Patrick as a little boy.”

She lets him deflect and when Patrick comes back into the kitchen, they’re both laughing. “He took his baseball glove and his teddy bear and sat at the end of the driveway for three hours because he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to run away to the park or his friend’s house.” 

As he comes in from the back deck, Patrick reaches over to squeeze David’s shoulder and she notices how he unconsciously leans into her son’s touch.

“What are we talking about in here?”

“Oh, your mom was just sharing some of the best stories from your childhood.”

Patrick makes a face, mostly in jest. “You know, I feel like I haven’t fully explored your childhood with your family, I’m sure they must have some stories they could share?”

“Well, you can try, but if you want the best stories, you’re going to need to talk to my former nanny. Should I get you her phone number?”

Both David and Patrick laugh and she watches Patrick press a kiss to David’s temple but David’s response reminds her of how different David’s childhood was from anything she or Patrick have known. 

She knows the story, of course. After they had met David and his family, she had googled them and had been shocked to see how different the internet headlines seemed from the family that she’d met. At the time, she’d chalked it up to the whims of the media, but now she wonders if it’s just that they have changed a lot from who they were.

After dinner, she shoos them out onto the back porch while she and Clint tidy the kitchen. Through the open window, she sees David arrange himself on the patio sofa so that his head is in Patrick’s lap. Absentmindedly, her son begins to run his fingers through his fiance’s hair. She can hear murmurs of their conversation through the window.

“I feel out of that tree when I was eight and broke my arm. I was so mad, I had to miss an entire season of Little League.”

“Maybe I should have tried that.” She hears Patrick laugh in response.

Clint comes up beside her and follows her gaze out the window. “He looks so happy. How did we not see how unhappy he was before?”

She shakes her head. The idea that Patrick has spent so much of his life missing out on the happiness he now has makes her want to cry. And the fact that they hadn’t noticed makes it even worse. She feels like she failed him. She knows that Patrick would disagree, but she’s his mother, the fact that she couldn’t see that something was wrong, even if she wasn’t able to fix it for him, tears her up inside. Her heart cracks a little at the thought. Once again she’s grateful to David for bringing such joy into his life.

She hasn’t intended to eavesdrop on her son, but David’s next question leaves her frozen by the window.

“How does it feel to be back here?”

She sees Patrick shake his head and she wishes she could see his face.

“I’ve missed my parents and I’m glad we came to visit. But it’s...it’s stirred up a lot of memories as well. I’m glad you’re here with me.” She turns away as Patrick bends down to kiss the man he loves.

When they had first met David, she hadn’t known what to think, he was so different from everyone they knew with his elaborate hair and his luxury wardrobe. But from that first moment, she’d been able to see David’s desire to protect Patrick, to make things right for him. Even so, she’s wondered if what the two of them have is real or simply a matter of two people brought together by circumstance. 

Watching them now, even though they have only been here for a couple of hours, she can see that the love between them is undeniable. She can see the way they look for each other when one of them comes into the room, the way they seek each other’s touch, the way they make each other laugh. 

It’s everything she’s always wanted for her son, her only lingering regret is that it took so long for him to find it.


End file.
